


Time to Kill

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Castiel Is So Done, Cute, Dating, Drunk Castiel, Drunken Flirting, First Meetings, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Insecure Dean, Light Angst, M/M, Speed Dating, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 18:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15891402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: “Any luck?”In lieu of response, Cas throws back the rest of his Moscato. His burp is way too guttural, even for someone with as raspy a voice as him. It actually hurts his throat and a small amount of bile swims to the surface. “Augh—I… I’m good.”“And we’re done with the alcohol,” Dean declares, plucking the wine glass in one swift move.





	Time to Kill

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea that's been floating around in my head for a while, but I either forgot about it or just never gave it room to grow. Hopefully you enjoy it!

“So then I told Malachi  _I’m_ the new leader of the faction—that he’s not standing in my way of serving my people the justice they deserve.”

“Oh, so you’re in politics?” Cas asks, tilting his glass to accommodate his lips as he glances at the timer on the table. It’s a strange sensation, drinking beer. Despite being half-full, it’s still a little fizzy. It dances on his tongue like bare feet on a hot sidewalk, and leaves a strange-tasting, lingering burn in his mouth. _That’s what adults drink,_ his best friend Charlie said while prepping him on speed-dating, _it makes you look sophisticated, but down-to-earth._

Cas must’ve missed something, because the guy looks personally offended… which, given his varsity jock vibe with the crew-cut hair and Kiefer Sutherland stoicism, isn’t hard to muster. “No, of course not. You don’t get it? My name? I’m the angel Bartholomew, one of the twelve Disciples of the Lord.”

Luckily, Cas opens his mouth as the bartender rounds the corner. “Right... um, can you top off that Corona, please?”

 

 

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“I serve food to the homeless at the local shelter.”

“Mmm.” Cas hums around his drink. “That’s... really cool.” It’s a nice breath of sanity from Bartholomew and a couple others—literally. He was accosted by Meg and her boyfriend Lucy earlier about a threesome (which is the least strangest approach so far, actually). Plus, this girl’s really attractive. Light blue eyes, long red hair pulled back in a small braid. She’s even light on her makeup, despite the small cut on her eyebrow. “How long have you been doing that?”

“However long I’ve been on probation.”

Cas waves for a refill. He’ll need way more than what he’s got in his glass to handle eight more minutes of April Kelly.

 

 

“So then I said, ‘That’s rich, an autobiography?’ And the ironic part? It’s told in  _third person omniscient._ I said, ‘No wonder, seeing as you think you’re playing God and all.’ So I started writing my own autobiography. It’s called ‘I Met God in a Sports Bar’. Do you wanna hear an excerpt? I have the first chapter memorized.”

Cas, who can’t tell if he’s more drunk off three Coronas or the sheer hopelessness he’s witnessed in humanity today, swallows thickly, looking at the timer as he raises a finger. “I really don’t think that’s… you know, we only have so much time—”

“‘It was July 21, 2016—the day I met him,” Metatron announces, causing a few heads to turn. He’s doing that really crazy thing with his eyes again that makes him look both happy and murderous. “He was gnawing on far more than broken peanut shells when he drank me in like whiskey on the rocks. An icy chill even passed through me when he asked, ‘Do you know where the restroom is?’”

 

 

“Are you a thirty inch?”

Like oil from a broken gasket, Cas’s mouth sputters some of his wine.

Balthazar insisted on Barefoot Pink Moscato because “low cal is so much more refreshing”. Cas isn’t arguing when the alcohol content is three times the amount of a regular Corona. With any luck, he won’t remember any of this tomorrow. And if he does, he’ll remember Balthazar as a Greek Adonis with sun-kissed cheeks and abs able to withstand Zeus’ strongest thunderbolts instead of the middle-aged French connoisseur adorning minimal-effort clothing trapped in a pre-pubescent boy’s body. “I’m sorry?”

“Thirty inches, your waist,” Balthazar says, lifting his brows. “You have insanely broad shoulders.”

Cas blinks a few times. “Um. Thank you? But no, I’m actually a thirty-two.”

“Oh.” Balthazar’s face turns dramatically sour. Dean happens to be behind him in passing. He and Cas trade confused looks while Balthazar pads his _insanely broad_ forehead with his creased napkin. Dean mimics him by twisting his face and clutching at the invisible pearls resting on his red flannel. Cas holds back a laugh. “I’m—uh, sorry, I’ll be leaving now.”

 

 

To Cas’s surprise, Dean joins him at his booth during intermission. He doesn’t know the man in the slightest aside from his name, and that’s only because he kept flagging him down throughout the course of the night, and “Bartender!” got embarrassing after a while. “Any luck?”

In lieu of response, Cas throws back the rest of his Moscato. His burp is way too guttural, even for someone with as raspy a voice as him. It actually hurts his throat and a small amount of bile swims to the surface. “Augh—I… I’m good.”

“And we’re done with the alcohol,” Dean declares, plucking the wine glass in one swift move. Cas flinches a few seconds later.

“Hey, you’re the bartender; you’re not suppos’ta limit my alcohol consumption.”

“No, but I can exercise my right not to serve you,” he states. “Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

“Is that before or after I wake up tomorrow miser’ble n’ depressed?”

“Or slightly less hungover.”

“I just can’t believe it,” Cas scoffs. “I’m just… I didn’t even wanna come out t’night, you know? I wanted to have a quiet night at home with my guinea pig rewatching The Wire _._ Instead I’m sitting here, in a tacky bar and grill, sitting across a dreamboat bartender and ex-D.A.R.E. coach whose definition of fun involves a Full House lecture. Don’t even _mention_ Fuller House,” he warns. “I’ll just get more disappointed.”

Dean’s plump pink lips twitch, causing his stubble to spread out like sand when water hits the shore. “What did you call me?”

“A bartender?”

“No, the other thing.”

“An ex-D.A.R.E. coach?”

Dean’s grin just fans out. Cas hates that he can’t get the joke, but he likes feeling light like this. Like a cherub doing a little cloud hopping. “Yeah, that.” He nods before saying, “I used to be an alcoholic, actually.”

“ _Ripley’s_ Believe It or Not.”

“What?”

“I said that’s hard to believe.”

Dean chuckles, “Yeah. It hasn’t been easy, being surrounded by alcohol, but it’s the only thing I know the most about. Aside from cars, but I dunno…”

“Don’t know what?”

“If I’m good enough,” he says. “I’ve never been good in school. The only numbers I’ve ever known are the ones that got scribbled on my hand and my blood alcohol content…” Dean leans in, as if to tell a secret. Cas makes a seashell out of his ear by cupping his right hand around it. “Between you and me, I’ve never been good at the dating scene either. My brother always tried to set me up with someone, but I was never interested in genuine conversation. I was young, insecure. And alcohol didn’t need to know my backstory.”

Cas leans back to express the shock parking his mouth.

“What’s up?”

“Sorry, it’s just…” Cas thinks the thing swarming up his throat is another attempt at his stomach backfiring. Instead, he’s met with a swell of emotion. “You just openly admitted to all of that… and you think you’re not good enough for trade school?”

Dean shrugs. His multi-faced emerald eyes glint under the lamplight hanging above the booth, despite the frown making a guest appearance. Cas has only been tuned into the Dean Show for an hour—the length of a commercial-free episode that turned out to be a quarter of that due to the slew of unrelated, poorly executed cast of unrelated characters with regurgitated lines—but that expression is definitely not a fan-favorite of his.

“Dean,” he says, moving in closer. His hands are right there, fresh for the picking, but Cas doesn’t want to risk the first decent conversation he’s had in an hour over a miscalculation. So he folds his own hands together and rests them on the table, just short of Dean’s. “Get out of here. You’re better than this.”

Dean shakes his head, which is slapped in fresh red paint. “I don’t know. I’ve just never been good in school. I barely have my GED.”

“What’s there to college? You show up, listen to some stuff, and go home,” Cas says. “You’re already a master listener. The only difference is you’re not getting paid to listen to someone’s self-righteous bull.”

“That’s fair. What about you? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a professor.”

The crow’s feet around Dean’s eyes, as well as the lines adjacent to the hearty apples holding his freckled cheeks, crease to house the smile crossing the great plains of his face. “Of course you are.”

“Well, thanks a lot; I’m significantly less intoxicated now.”

“Good.” Dean’s confident as he leans forward. His heart catches when he starts lightly tracing the lines between Cas’s folded hands with his right index finger. “Because that means if I asked you out after my shift, and you said yes, it would more likely be for my award-winning personality, rather than my much handsomer, alcohol-induced twin.”

It’s Cas’s turn to bust into a smile. “I’ll happily accompany both of them on a date.”

Dean’s suave slips like that. He has to resort to biting his lip so his own doesn’t break his face. “Cool. Sweet... and wow, we made it in just less than ten minutes.”

“Huh? Oh.” Cas pushes the timer off before resting his hands over Dean’s. “Who’s keeping track of the time, anyway?”

 

 


End file.
